So Long At The Fair & Down At The Palomino Club

“carry me along, taddy,
like you done through the toy fair”
— James Joyce

Hell we figured It would get behind
the food-exhibits, the hog-judging, etc.,
but Christ, toward late afternoon a body
couldn’t he’p but notice Its dense soul-lessness;
Its implacable refusal to go along with our
recreation, —
We all laughed to scorn those old Zeppelin
dinosaurs you know,
& winked about the Toad-in-a-Hole,
& that cotton-candy teenage Tiresias;
we dug those glib barkers that cut up
fruits & vegetables, —
our gang bush-wacked a clown with water pistols
fulla tears, pecked paranoid turkey-dick
til its comb got red,
slapped it on the feather
with a generous “right-on, buddy,”
& jest righteously kept on trucking
toward total fun . . .
Pervo kept asking “do we love one another?”,
Spanky warned It how we never-mind this fly-ash
we breathe now
unless some bummer’s sob
or hawk & spit brings it up,
threatening to bring our party down;
then black flack flowers burst
into bloom around pigasus,
bloody that face of wood-pulp & bat-shet
whining about how it hurts to sober-up . . !
(It’ll tell ya anything out front,
but when you go in you’re more’n likely to find
auld sweinhund ripe for the Home . . !)
So anyway we split the pleasure-fair’s
barbarous parade, where to see what we like to do
is proof of Its fault-line,
& on Highway 1, as the switchophrenic welcher
cried “I love you”, we ate Its stare
(of blue pork eye of brown) down both barrels;
loyally the little woman backed her man up
in this . . . Lastly, down in the Palomino Club
while that beautiful freak goddaughter
of Kitty wells wailed,
our compassion all puked away, we toasted
Its death in a double-black rush,
smiling, & handed Its snout the glass,
conjuring our Man right-on over to the high-side,
in the rite in the right on the right
   in the “Love?…self-betrayal” in the Wright
       O my brothers  inn our own  right in
           the right  what was it the old
               draB  fo  novA said about
                           in thee write
                        It's alright  ?  in the right
                                    in the ride
                                rose-hips vit  am  ins
                                    the right
                                        Way

Los Angeles County Fair
& the Linda Ronstadt set
September 1972